Erect perennial herb up to 1 m tall, unbranched or branched at base; stems terete to weakly ribbed, glabrate. Leaves opposite; blades broadly ovate, up to 18 cm long and 13 cm wide, the base somewhat rounded and abruptly broadly decurrent on the petiole, strongly trinervate from near base with strongly ascend-ing secondary veins remote from margin, the margin bluntly serrate or dentate to subentire, not angular, the apex bluntly short-acute or slightly acuminate, the surfaces with very few small hairs, the veins sparsely glandular-haired below; petioles up to 8 cm long, broadly winged above, the wings narrow or lacking in basal half. Inflorescence laxly and usually profusely cymosely branched, ultimate branches 1-3 cm long, usually densely glandular-puberulous. Heads 5-6 mm high and 5-7 mm wide with ca. 10-25 florets; involucral bracts ca. 10-20, eximbricate, in 2 series, oblong to slightly obovate, mostly 3-4 mm long, reaching only to the level of the corolla tubes, apically rounded with little or no scarious margin; corolla white often with a lavender limb, ca. 2.5 mm long, narrowly funnel-form with a short tube and rather cylindrical limb, few to many glands on outer surface, the hairs restricted to near bases of the lobes, the lobes 5; anther collars broad below with many subquadrate cells; style shaft with many hairs, the style branches becoming exserted ca. 2 mm, very broadly clavate. Achenes 2.0-2.5 mm long, covered with glanduliferous tubercles; carpopodium prominently oblique toward inner side, fitting into deep, inwardly directed pits of receptacle; pappus usually of 3 glutiniferous knobs. Pollen 18-20 microns in diameter.
A weed in wet situations; streamsides, ditches, old gardens, sometimes troublesome in badly-drained pasture; at elevations up to 2,000 metres in New Guinea.
Home